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High today, here: 12. Dewpoint then: 1. High dewpoint: 1.
High today in TO: 14. Dewpoint then: -1. High dewpoint: 2.
Low today on the balcony: 0.9. High: 14.6. Currently: 7.7.
Hope that isn't sun interference creeping back in there.
Dumped one Hasek. I've been down a forward, and the guy in second place, in his wildly over-activist attempts to catch me, dropped Eric Staal, for some reason. So, Hasek for Staal.
Spent most of today reading commentaries on the Crito. They make my head spin. Largely because there are two basic interpretive questions, which can easily be confused, or left unclarified: 1) which views, if any, in the Crito are Socrates's own?, and 2) which views, if any, in the Crito are Plato's own?
One of the commentaries I read was, of course, Strauss's, which is half of an essay on the Crito and the Apology. It's pretty hard to make out exactly what Strauss's point is about the Crito, but it seems like his point is more or less the same as the one in the paper I'm commenting on, though maybe less fleshed out: what Socrates is really concerned with is the state of his soul, but Crito isn't up to understanding that.
Whether Crito is up to understanding what Socrates (as historical person or Platonic character) really thinks--and, consequently, whether Socrates bothers to say what he really thinks--is pretty much the question among recent commentators. Richard Kraut seems to be in a minority in holding on to the view that, look, Socrates tells the mob at his trial what he really thinks, so why wouldn't he tell Crito what he really thinks? I can't see how you could really convincingly say why he wouldn't. Especially given that he tells Crito, at the outset, that the important thing is to do whatever the best argument says he should do (or something like that). What's kind of odd about that, though, is that, at the end, Socrates says he doesn't think he can be convinced to change his mind, though Crito can go ahead and try, if he thinks it'll do any good. Something I read today spun this as typical Socratic fallibilism--Socrates invites Crito to refute him--but it looks, pretty obviously, like just the opposite. This whole dialogue very uncharacteristically shuts down debate, or refuses to pursue debatable points, at every turn. It's really hard to figure.
Grote's 19th-century commentary suggests that Plato means his protrayal of an obedient Socrates in the Crito to counteract the social effect of the reception of his Apology, with its portrayal of a rebellious Socrates. Which points toward an issue that bugs me all the time, but which nobody seems to have anything to say about: in what manner were these dialogues released into the world? Did Plato "publish" them as he wrote them? Did he ever edit them after they were published--were there different editions? To what extent, if at all, are later dialogues influenced by reactions to earlier ones? (A few years ago, I read the Parmenides, and it struck me that this Aristotle at the end, with all these really obscurely technical arguments, is actually supposed to be the historical Aristotle, and the whole dialogue is, basically, sending up Aristotle and Aristotle's block-headed reaction to Plato. The prof I was TAing for at the time dismissed that idea--she thought Aristotle would've been too young when Plato wrote the Parmenides--and I've never pursued the idea further.)
The thing that gets me about all these commentaries is, they never mention the thing that got me when I was reading the Crito there last week, or whenever it was: one of the arguments made by the personified Laws of Athens, that Socrates owes them obedience because they made him what he is, is basically the same argument Socrates gives in the Republic for making the true philosophers submit to ruling the city (which they won't want to, because they'll be so enthralled by the forms).
I'd been wondering lately whether Strauss and the Straussians are strictly non-persons among Plato scholars--it's hard to miss the fact that, while Bloom's Republic fairly reliably shows up in, e.g., used bookstores, it is never, ever referred to in the most respectable literature. Looking through piles of commentaries today, I determined that there are, now, in fact, two parallel anglophone Plato literatures: alongside the orthodox one, in which Vlastos and Kraut are the touchstones, there has arisen a Straussian one. Orthodox commentaries never mention the Straussians, and the Straussians never mention Vlastos.
High today in TO: 14. Dewpoint then: -1. High dewpoint: 2.
Low today on the balcony: 0.9. High: 14.6. Currently: 7.7.
Hope that isn't sun interference creeping back in there.
Dumped one Hasek. I've been down a forward, and the guy in second place, in his wildly over-activist attempts to catch me, dropped Eric Staal, for some reason. So, Hasek for Staal.
Spent most of today reading commentaries on the Crito. They make my head spin. Largely because there are two basic interpretive questions, which can easily be confused, or left unclarified: 1) which views, if any, in the Crito are Socrates's own?, and 2) which views, if any, in the Crito are Plato's own?
One of the commentaries I read was, of course, Strauss's, which is half of an essay on the Crito and the Apology. It's pretty hard to make out exactly what Strauss's point is about the Crito, but it seems like his point is more or less the same as the one in the paper I'm commenting on, though maybe less fleshed out: what Socrates is really concerned with is the state of his soul, but Crito isn't up to understanding that.
Whether Crito is up to understanding what Socrates (as historical person or Platonic character) really thinks--and, consequently, whether Socrates bothers to say what he really thinks--is pretty much the question among recent commentators. Richard Kraut seems to be in a minority in holding on to the view that, look, Socrates tells the mob at his trial what he really thinks, so why wouldn't he tell Crito what he really thinks? I can't see how you could really convincingly say why he wouldn't. Especially given that he tells Crito, at the outset, that the important thing is to do whatever the best argument says he should do (or something like that). What's kind of odd about that, though, is that, at the end, Socrates says he doesn't think he can be convinced to change his mind, though Crito can go ahead and try, if he thinks it'll do any good. Something I read today spun this as typical Socratic fallibilism--Socrates invites Crito to refute him--but it looks, pretty obviously, like just the opposite. This whole dialogue very uncharacteristically shuts down debate, or refuses to pursue debatable points, at every turn. It's really hard to figure.
Grote's 19th-century commentary suggests that Plato means his protrayal of an obedient Socrates in the Crito to counteract the social effect of the reception of his Apology, with its portrayal of a rebellious Socrates. Which points toward an issue that bugs me all the time, but which nobody seems to have anything to say about: in what manner were these dialogues released into the world? Did Plato "publish" them as he wrote them? Did he ever edit them after they were published--were there different editions? To what extent, if at all, are later dialogues influenced by reactions to earlier ones? (A few years ago, I read the Parmenides, and it struck me that this Aristotle at the end, with all these really obscurely technical arguments, is actually supposed to be the historical Aristotle, and the whole dialogue is, basically, sending up Aristotle and Aristotle's block-headed reaction to Plato. The prof I was TAing for at the time dismissed that idea--she thought Aristotle would've been too young when Plato wrote the Parmenides--and I've never pursued the idea further.)
The thing that gets me about all these commentaries is, they never mention the thing that got me when I was reading the Crito there last week, or whenever it was: one of the arguments made by the personified Laws of Athens, that Socrates owes them obedience because they made him what he is, is basically the same argument Socrates gives in the Republic for making the true philosophers submit to ruling the city (which they won't want to, because they'll be so enthralled by the forms).
I'd been wondering lately whether Strauss and the Straussians are strictly non-persons among Plato scholars--it's hard to miss the fact that, while Bloom's Republic fairly reliably shows up in, e.g., used bookstores, it is never, ever referred to in the most respectable literature. Looking through piles of commentaries today, I determined that there are, now, in fact, two parallel anglophone Plato literatures: alongside the orthodox one, in which Vlastos and Kraut are the touchstones, there has arisen a Straussian one. Orthodox commentaries never mention the Straussians, and the Straussians never mention Vlastos.
